Conroy Wants Poll Watchers in 69th District

Assemblyman Mickey Conroy said Tuesday that he wants “volunteer poll watchers” on Election Day at 21 voter precincts in the 69th Assembly District, where Republicans are accusing Democrats of committing voter fraud.

However, even as the Orange Republican was devising plans to ensure voter integrity in the heavily minority Assembly district, Orange County election officials said that so far they have found no evidence of fraud among the roughly three dozen Democratic voters who were found by Republicans to have multiple registrations.

Although Conroy vowed that the volunteers would not interfere with voters in the Nov. 8 election but would simply watch for possible voter fraud, Democrats angrily called the plan an attempt to intimidate Latino voters.

Democrats equated Conroy’s plan to the 1988 incident in which Republicans posted uniformed security guards at Latino polling sites in what is now the 69th Assembly District. As a result, Republicans eventually paid $400,000 to five Latino plaintiffs to settle a lawsuit.

The 69th Assembly District seat has been targeted by both Republicans and Democrats because it is the only one in Orange County now held by a Democrat. The incumbent, Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), is vacating the seat to run for state attorney general.

Last week, Conroy and 10 other GOP legislators sent a letter to Orange County Registrar of Voters Donald Tanney, urging that by the end of the month he purge the names of those who are illegally registered to vote in the 69th District. The Republicans submitted more than three dozen examples of multiple voter registrations by Democrats.

But so far, a preliminary check of voter registrations has found no proof of the Republicans’ allegation of voter fraud, Tanney said.

“We have not one shred (of evidence) that anyone has ever tried to vote twice,” Tanney said, emphasizing that his review was continuing and would be completed by the end of the week. Multiple voter registration listings have been corrected, he added.

Also submitted by the Republicans were the names of dozens of Democratic voters who listed homeless shelters in Santa Ana as their residence. Although homeless citizens can vote, Republicans suspected that bogus names were registered at the shelters. Tanney said his office was just beginning to review that facet of the complaint.

Democrats at first accused the GOP of sour grapes because the Democrats now hold a 21-point voter registration lead over Republicans in the 69th District--55.6% to 34.7%. The district includes parts of Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove. Republicans, however, believe Democrats are inflating the registration numbers to help influence campaign fund-raising efforts in Sacramento.

Jim Morrissey, the GOP candidate in the 69th District, said the Republicans’ letter to Tanney alleging voter fraud, as well as Conroy’s idea to post poll watchers, had not been discussed with his campaign.

But Morrissey noted that in the past, both parties have routinely used poll watchers to keep track of who has voted and adjust their get-out-the-vote campaigns. He said that is how his campaign intends to work the polls.

Morrissey downplayed the claim by Democrats that poll watchers intimidate voters. “I can’t see how that could be true,” he said. “If you are a legal voter, why should you worry?”

Conroy, who is determined to return the seat to Republicans, has taken up the voter fraud issue by calling particular attention to the large number of people who listed the two Santa Ana homeless shelters as their residence.

While he admitted that his plan is in the formative stages, he said he wants to post poll watchers at 21 out of 125 precincts in the district for a possible post-election challenge of the results and also to place county election officials on notice to watch for voter fraud.

The assemblyman said the presence of his poll watchers would not be a repeat of the 1988 poll guard episode, although he called that controversy “blown absolutely out of proportion.”

“It’s not going to be anything like that at all. We will have true volunteers,” Conroy said. “You will not even know they are around. There will not be anybody with uniforms on, nor will we be asking anybody whether they are legal to vote or not.”

What the volunteers will be doing, Conroy said, is watching those who enter the polling place to make sure no one tries to vote more than once. Also, absentee ballots picked up on Election Day will be challenged to verify that the signatures on the ballots match those of the registered voters.

Tanney said volunteers are allowed to watch the goings-on at polling places. But if a challenge is raised about a person’s right to vote, it must be submitted in writing to the registrar and cannot be made to the voter or the election official at the polling place.

Democrats are skeptical about Conroy’s plan.

“Anybody can stand around and watch, but that’s not what they did last time,” said Rich Milner, a spokesman for Mike Metzler, the Democratic candidate in the 69th District race. He added that Republicans are “inventing a (voter fraud) problem that’s not there.”

Conroy’s plan also drew an angry response from Orange County Democratic Party Chairwoman Dorianne Garcia.

“That’s the same thing that happened before and we fought against it, and we will fight against it this time,” Garcia said. “I don’t care if they are in uniforms or Republican costumes. . . . It’s not (Conroy’s) place to direct (county election) workers.”

California Democratic Party Chairman Bill Press warned that if there is a repeat of the 1988 poll guard incident, “we will sue (Conroy’s) Republican backside all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Umberg’s campaign manager, George Urch, said that “because Latinos are registered to vote, (Republicans) assume they are not citizens and they are trying to cheat the system. . . . You would think they would have learned from the poll guard thing, but obviously, they have not.”